This is an excellent question, Nuno. In 1988 and 1989, when I published my first books (in Castillian), I just used "David Wright" because I thought using my middle name or my mother's surname would seem pretentious. In 1991 I was in Austin using the magnificent Benson Latin American Collection. I typed "David Wright" into the digital catalog to see if they had my books, and I was amazed to see how many people with this name have published in the field of Latin American studies. I decided I would use everything I had in subsecuent publications, including my middle name and my mother's surname, which the Secretaría de Gobernación had generously granted me on my migratory documents. I am glad I made this decision, since until now I am the only "David Charles Wright Carr" on the web, so I can see what is going on with my work on the internet. In my rare English language publications I take off my mother's surname to avoid confusion. ResearchGate put the hyphen between my paternal and maternal surnames, which reflects the growing trend mentioned in the article you provide (thanks for that). Perhaps in future English language publications I will use this hyphenated form.

My advice to beginning authors from Spanish and Portugese speaking countries would be to use all of the names they have, to reduce the possibility of confusion with other authors. The use of the hyphen between surnames will minimize or eliminate the danger of being listed as if the maternal surname were paternal.

Thanks for the reference. As the authors say, this is mainly useful for research evaluation and academic effectiveness assessment. What worries me is the idea that the entire world should subscribe to a standard one-size-fits-all scheme in which diversity is reduced to a one and only "universal" standard. This is the reason why Chinese researchers have to adapt their original names to an English Language standard, sacrificing their identity for the sake of English readers. The same happened with the codification of languages into digital representation, in which only English was taken into account. After years of struggle, finally ANSI is no longer the only standard and UTF-8 has taken over as a more diverse digital representation of human languages.

The article succeeds in telling us how computers or scientometricians expect us to behave, but what the authors call human errors is what I call Language. My question is why should academics follow these conventions? of course universities, deans, directors, will impose these conventions at some point for the sake of surveillance. And I'm afraid scholars will follow, because of their characteristic lack of initiative and social resistance. We should instead welcome the diversity of names, and the diversity of languages in science. 

Good point! I am indeed in full favour of diversity of languages. Having born in a different language than english, I had to comply with the status quo language at the moment: english for my profesional career.

However the system of academic evaluation of merit (whatever that may be) seems to be moving towards evaluation of individual contributions based upon consequences of published material, and is increasingly taking decisions based on metrics done automatically by camputer programs that search for a "name". It is of one interest to be accuratly counted.

I am not saying that this is the correct or the best method. Only that it is the actual method. Therefore latin names with compound surnames and acents such as - ô, ã, é, ì, ç, etc. are normally omitted from such searches. And there are all the other languages with their own different letters. It is good to know that a codification format such as UTF-8 is being more and more used. I will hopefully be able to correctly write my name and be recognised as Nuno Simões   :-)

Estimados todos.

gracias por sus comentarios y apoyo, me alaga y sorprende, pues es un inconveniente en ciencia (investigación) bien conocido pero no indicado y que se pasa por alto.

Bueno, ahora me permito escribir en ESPAÑOL, aunque el articulo haya sido en INGLES. (diversidad de idiomas).

y escribo en español, dando diversidad de idioma y porque  el articulo llamo más la atención de los no-latinos que de los propios latinos.

Pues bien, estamos hablando de "identidad de autoría" y estamos hablando de ciencia, en un ámbito de la investigación.

Bajo este esquema, como bien dice "David Charles Wright-Carr", es muy bueno ser único y aun más para los sistemas de evaluación académica.  Y quiero ser único.

Coloco un ejemplo, Estoy seguro que nadie nadie (biólogo) ha cambiado la identidad de autoría del descubridor de una especie, aunque este se haya casado, divorciado o similar; entonces su nombre es su nombre y permanecerá. Pero si llegara haber cambio ya sea en el autor o la especie, habrá también un escrito del porque dicho cambio y no seria cambio seria actualización con una razón y previo estudio.

Entonces "Diego" ó "Diego Andres Chavarro" ó "Diego Chavarro" o "DACh", ó "Andres Chavarro" (puedes hacer mas permutaciones, por ende, más diversidades y cambios a tu nombre)...no puedo compartir el que deberíamos dar la bienvenida a la diversidad de nombres al escribir y publicar; pero si puedo compartir que haya diversidad de idiomas al escribir y publicar.

por ejemplo, es muy interesante ver el perfil researchgate de Róbert Stohl y ver que él publica en su idioma nativo (creo es hungaro, según traductor) y eso no le quita mantener su "identidad de autoría", siempre.

Bueno mi intensión es que nuestra "identidad de autoría" al publicar se conserve y no lo cambiemos solo por cambiar; a no ser que no se desee ser reconocido, y si es el caso pues mejor usar un seudónimo como muchos pintores y escultores lo han hecho.

Es así que al publicar, estoy de acuerdo con la diversidad de idiomas 8ingles, español, frances, portugues, hungaro, chino, etc), pero no diversidad de identidades, refiriéndome a los nombres.

Por ejemplo mi nombre es "Omar Hernando Avila-Poveda" en cualquier parte del mundo, y eso me da identidad, y ser único.

No quiero ser solo Omar Avila o Avila Poveda, pues son muchos, y por ejemplo si buscan en google por "Avila Poveda" podrán encontrar muchas mas personas, en contraste "Omar Hernando Avila-Poveda" solo soy yo, y eso me da "identidad de autoria".

También debemos entender que muchas culturas asiáticas, no tiene letras en sus alfabetos, y por el contrario son símbolos, y lamentablemente esto los lleva a transformar su nombre de símbolo a un nombre con letras.

comparto muchas opiniones como que el INGLES es un idioma que por si solo se ha posicionado en ser oficial para hacer ciencia y publicar la investigación, pero igual podemos escribir en otros idiomas.

lo importante y que recomiendo en el articulo, en las conclusiones, es que cada uno de nosotros en la posición que estemos como investigadores (ya sea autor, revisor, editor, o proveedor de servicio en internet) no olvidemos observar bien y no cambiemos la identidad de autoría, sin importar el idioma en el que escribamos.

Recordemos que somos investigadores y realizamos observación, pero si cambiamos los nombres a libre juicio, eso no es observar.

En mi posición como autor, revisor y editor, me pude percatar de estos inconvenientes en la "identidad de autoría" y por eso decidí escribir, con la intensión de dar a conocer esto a toda la comunidad científica y lo principal poner en practica:

Technical report: the trend of author compound names and its implications for authorship identity identification

finalmente, como indico en la conclusión del articulo, y como ahora le doy diversidad con varios idiomas.

I believe that successful writing as a scientist, either in English and/or Spanish, or another language, does not only concern in the text and content of the article, but should be reflected since the same author’s name and how it is placed, and how we want to be quoted and/or interpreted in the realm of scientific publication.

Creo que la escritura con éxito como científico, tanto en Inglés y / o español, o en otro idioma, lo hace la preocupación no sólo en el texto y el contenido del artículo, sino debe reflejarse desde el nombre del mismo autor y cómo se coloca y cómo queremos ser citado y / o interpretado en el ámbito de la divulgación científica.

Hiszem, hogy a sikeres írás, mint egy tudós, vagy angol és / vagy spanyol, vagy más nyelven, nem csak érinti a szövegben, és a cikk tartalmát, de meg kell jelennie, hiszen ugyanaz a szerző nevét, és hogyan kerül, és hogyan akarjuk, hogy idézett és / vagy értelmezni birodalmában tudományos kiadvány.

Eu acredito que a escrita de sucesso como cientista, quer em Inglês e / ou espanhol, ou outro idioma, não diz apenas respeito no texto e conteúdo do artigo, mas deve ser refletida já que o nome do mesmo autor e como ele é colocado, e como queremos ser citado e / ou interpretadas no campo da publicação científica.

我相信，成功的写作作为一个科学家，无论是在英语和/或西班牙语或其他语言，确实在文章的文字和内容，不仅关注，但应自同一作者的名字反映以及它是如何放置，并我们要如何报价和/或解释的科学出版物的境界。

我相信，成功的寫作作為一個科學家，無論是在英語和/或西班牙語或其他語言，確實在文章的文字和內容，不僅關注，但應自同一作者的名字反映以及它是如何放置，並我們要如何報價和/或解釋的科學出版物的境界。

Un saludo a todos,

y espero puedan leer completamente el artículo, PERO LO PRINCIPAL, QUE SEA PUESTO EN PRÁCTICA.

Saludos Omar.

Finally, returning to the original question from Nuno Simoes: Is there a simple, straight-forward, "standard" for latin-names authorship ?.

I think there is no standard, but each one can decide your " authorship identity ", and with one or two names, but it is clear that the greater number of names and surnames, give better "identity", as also said David Charles Wright-Carr.

That sums it up very well, Omar.

Sometimes gringos think it's funny that I use two surnames, since I was born in Michigan, but my mother is delighted to see her maiden name on my publications!

Saludos.

Thank you for clarifying your point, Omar Hernando Avila-Poveda. This discussion shows how politics (geo, identity - politics) are embedded even in apparently simple things such as names.

Hello,

I share the following very good article (pdf and link):

This article have similar item to my approach regard to authorship identity, but in author to specie and misspelling.

See also the references:

example:

Alvarez-Noguera, F. (1987).

Álvarez, F. & Villalobos, J.L. (1997a)

Álvarez, F. & Villalobos, J.L. (1997b)

Villalobos, J.L. & Alvarez, F. (2010)

Villalobos-Hiriart, J.L., Cantú Diaz-Barriga, A. & Lira-Fernández, E. (1993)

GUINOT D, HENDRICKX ME (2014) Correct date and authorship of taxa of Middle American freshwater crabs described by Rodríguez & Smalley (1972) (not 1969) and included in Smalley (1970) (Crustacea: Decapoda: Brachyura: Pseudothelphusidae). Zootaxa 3821 (4): 476–484

http://www.mapress.com.pbidi.unam.mx:8080/zootaxa/list/2014/3821%284%29.html

http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3821.4.6

Cheers,

http://www.mapress.com.pbidi.unam.mx:8080/zootaxa/list/2014/3821%284%29.html

Article Correct date and authorship of taxa of Middle American fresh...

Dear colleagues

If I may add a point, it depends on putting into practice a standarized name by the authors. Regardless the technical intermediaries in the information citation chain, for me the seminal mistake comes from author's education, since this has to be implemented at teaching as part of scientific writing courses. There is also the careless review by authors at the time of publishing, mostly when they are coauthors far from the first position in the authors' lists. 

Depending on the complexity of the names and also in compound surnames (for example, Ponce de León, is a single surname, an example for non-Spanish speakers), there could be up to 13 variants or so.

This complexity has been previously described, for example, by SINDOC rules in 1997 for author name normalization and also by Rodrigo Costas and María Bordons (curiously from Mexico):

Algoritmos para solventar la falta de normalización de nombres de autor en los estudios bibliométricos. Investigación Bibliotecológica. 2007, Vol. 21, No. 42, 13-42. Available from: http://www.revistas.unam.mx/index.php/ibi/article/view/4115/3649 [Algorithms to solve the lack of author names normalization in bibliometric studies]

There are added troubles, due to automated name database harvesting software, set for English by default, there are standards that insert punctuation-changed characters (UTF8). Another problem arises at editing when not checking the correct names from the original publications for all the references.

It not only happens for latin names. I remember a paper in JASIST on Korean names seeking for similar solutions: Kim, S. & Cho, S. (2013). Characteristics of Korean personal names.. JASIST, 64, 86-95.

ORCID and RESEARCHERID are necessary standarizations, that paliate prior deficiencies for the time of database indexing, but what happens to those artciles that will never reach those repositories?

And we are looking here at normalization, but a different and the real task is disambiguation, not just considering a "cold" author name metadata analysis, but crossing it with other record fields such as affilliation and topics, and also looking at the very same articles. Maybe ontology algorithms would help to solve this inconsistencies at database harvesting.

In the meantime, SciELO database is increasing the standards by requesting all the names and surnames to all the authors.

With best regards.

Ernesto Galbán Rodríguez